In many networks, including the Internet, content communication over the network may be affected by certain network characteristics. These network characteristics may include one or more physical or logical characteristics of the network. For example, communications may be impacted by characteristics of a communication link (e.g., bandwidth, throughput, packet error rate, etc.), characteristics of a data terminal (e.g., resolution, memory, interface capabilities, etc.), and/or characteristics of a communication (e.g., protocol, security, quality-of-service guarantees, etc.). To improve content communications over the network, content providers may desire to profile network characteristics so as to adjust content communications accordingly.
Many network service subscribers communicate with a primary network (e.g., the Internet) through a modem or other network interface device. Because of the location and function of the modem in the network, the modem may be capable of directly receiving, measuring, and/or recording characteristics of the networks and devices with which it is connected. However, even where a modem has network profiling capabilities, these capabilities may be limited to profiling a small subset of potentially desirable network characteristics. Further, the data generated by the modem may not be available to content providers.
Instead, to profile certain network characteristics, content providers may typically communicate (i.e., transmit and receive) and track test data over the network. By tracking the communication, some desired network characteristics can be indirectly approximated. For example, by tracking the time it takes to send and receive a packet over the network, it may be possible to approximate the throughput, bandwidth, delay, etc. of the network. However, this and other similar ways of profiling network data may be limited for a number of reasons. One reason is that it may be possible to profile only a small subset of potentially desirable network characteristics. Another reason is that even those network characteristics that may be profiled, may often only be approximated.
As such, it may be desirable to directly generate desirable network characteristics and to manage the data so as to be available in a useful way for authorized content providers.